


Resurrection

by farad



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:18:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The slow path to redemption and acceptance</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> Belated for Mag7Daybook Bingo Three: Row Five, column 5 – Spyglass, Buck running for mayor of the town, opposites attract.
> 
> Also for the Daybook Halloween 2014 prompt "any, any, any, 'What do you mean you've been dead for years?' "
> 
> Especial thanks to Huntersglenn for multiple reads. An awesome beta! All mistakes my very own.

"See anything?" Chris pitched his voice low, hoping to surprise the other man. 

Vin continued to stare through his eyeglass, his back to Chris, not appearing at all surprised by Chris' presence on the roof of the mercantile. Vin never was, no matter how hard Chris tried to sneak up on him. And Chris had been trying, for a while now. 

"Nope," Vin answered. "Just them signs for Buck – he really meaning to do this?" He turned slightly as Chris came close. The end of the eyeglass moved, catching the sun and sparkling in the afternoon light. 

Chris scanned the horizon past the town; it looked like nothing was moving out in the flat land, which was good. No dust, no horses, not even the breeze that usually came up this time of the day, as the sun settled into the crook of the distant mountains. The outlaws headed this way hadn't shown up yet, going on two days now. Maybe they'd decided to go around, head to Mexico without coming through town. "Figure it's what Louisa wants, to run another campaign. If he wins, it's a victory for them both – she won a campaign for him and then she gets to be the mayor's wife. And maybe settle down, now that she's come back to him." He put his foot up on the riser that ran around the edge of the roof, leaning on his thigh. He was close enough to Vin to feel the heat of him, but not quite close enough to touch. 

"Buck as mayor," Vin said, amused. "Think he have solve all the town's problems with a tall tale and a laugh?"

Chris let his own humor rise, feeling it crackle warmly from his belly up through his throat, resting lightly on his tongue. It could have been a laugh, seeming to want out, pushing against his teeth, and the hinges of his jaws. It was a sensation he wasn't yet accustomed to now, not since Ella had come back into this life. This desire to laugh at things once more felt awkward and strange. Uncommon and just a little wrong. She had brought it all back, the pain and anger, the need for retribution. Amusement had no place in that. 

His first reaction was to swallow it, to force this explosion of good feeling down, as he did now. But he couldn't hold back all of it, and some of it slipped through the clench of his mouth to push at the corners of his lips. 

Vin was looking once more through his eyeglass, seeming to pay no attention. "Gotta wonder – what is it about this woman makes Buck want to change his ways? Settle down, become a leader of the community – just don't seem like him. Don't seem like her, neither, though I don't know her all that well, or, hell, women in general for that matter."

"No," Chris agreed, still feeling the strange stretch of his lips, the upturned ends. "In all the years I've known him, he's never been this attached, never for this long. Hell, he married her – after that, I knew he'd changed. Buck Wilmington, married. There are women from here to Kansas City shaking their heads in wonder. I keep waiting for Josiah to say it was a joke. Or to find out that something was wrong."

Vin let his eyeglass fall low, level with his belly, but he still stared into the distance, as if his gaze was as good as the range on the glass. Knowing him, maybe it was. 

"Guess I don't understand," he said quietly. "No, that ain't right. I know a man can change. I've seen it, a few times. But the way I've seen it, seems that some great, bad thing's got to happen to make a man take another path."

Chris turned his head and studied Vin for a time, letting the implications for the words seep into his mind. No doubt but that Vin was drawing a line to him – 'some great, bad thing' that made a man consider alternatives, or take another path. 

It was something Vin said often, mostly about this thing between them, that it was what it was because of what had happened in Chris' own past. It was a point Chris couldn't argue, though he sometimes tried, at least with himself. It had been 'a great, bad thing' that took his family from him. 

"Maybe he really did care for Hilda," he said, trying to keep the conversation about Buck. "Maybe losing her was his 'great, bad thing', making him more negotiable when Louisa showed back up."

Vin was silent, thinking. Or, more likely, thinking about how Chris had once again pushed the idea about himself away. 

Chris didn't like to think on it, though he knew he needed to. Not just for Vin, though Vin deserved it. Chris knew, though, that he needed to come to some sort of peace in his own mind. These spells of humor, of finding himself enjoying life again, these things were becoming too common, too easy. It wasn't time yet, not with Ella Gaines still out there, not with the renewed quest to find his family's killer. 

Just thinking that made his chest ache, though the wound itself was healed. It took away all sense of humor, reminding him that he had a mission, a goal, that nothing else could come before that. 

But just standing here, thinking that, he couldn't gather the temper he'd had for so long. He could feel the simple comfort of Vin's silence, the contentedness that was so easy to lose himself in when Vin was near. They were both men of habits, and their habits were so similar that Chris rarely questioned Vin and vice verse. Most of the time, they understood the 'why' of the other's actions, without ever needing to ask. 

But in a few, select ways, they were opposites. Vin's past had been hard, one based in loss and change, one in which the only sure thing was that which was right in front of him. 

Chris had had a future, the life that most men hoped for, one with a good home, a loving family, food on the table every night, and a warm bed to sleep in. It was a life Vin couldn't comprehend. 

Vin needed the safety of now, while Chris couldn't get past the loss of that perfect future. It was the difference between them, and it was pressing in again, heavy in the wake of Ella Gaines' perfididy. Chris knew he should take the offer Vin kept laying on the table in his subtle way, the offer to let Chris end it, to settle things between them one way or the other. 

Chris wanted to give Vin something. He wanted to bond Vin to him, to keep him here. But he couldn't say those words, couldn't acknowledge that his life had changed so much. Couldn't part, yet, with the price of that lost future, with the score he still had to settle. He stood with his mouth working, trying to find some words that might make a middle way between them. 

"I've been dead for years." The words hung in the air between them, as strange and unfamiliar as the joy had earlier, and it took him a time to realize they had come from his mouth. 

Beside him, Vin was still, and Chris wondered distantly if the words still echoing in his ears were only for him alone. 

The Vin drew a deep breath. He was looking at the mountains, where the sun was half hidden now, but Chris saw that the knuckles of his hand were white, gripping the eyeglass as if it were the most important thing in the world. 

"You've been dead for years," Vin repeated slowly, his voice low and more hoarse than usual. 

Chris noticed that there were deep lines cut into the corners of Vin's face, in his forehead. They made him look older, more grim. He thought again about the words he needed to say, but he couldn't get his head to look around the size of it, the sheer weight of the commitment. The sheer scope of how much he had changed because of this 'great, bad thing'. 

"Think I died, too, that night." The words tripped off his tongue, stumbling in the void of his denial. "Stopped caring about every thing, including myself. Mostly myself. Some days, even now, I still feel that way, like I died with them but my body's still here, left behind."

Vin blinked, long and slow, but he didn't turn to look at Chris. His grip on the eyeglass eased a little, his knuckles no longer white. The lines on his face, though, grew deeper, his lips thinning. "So you've been dead for years," he said again, though more slowly this time. "And you still feel that way."

It was only then that Chris considered what he had said, and how he had managed to sound the opposite of how he'd wanted. He drew a breath, struggling again to find words that would give him some room, but again, Vin found his first. It was easier for him, Chris thought distantly, because Vin was clear in his thinking, clear in his sense of loss. 

"Reckon I'm a fool to think I was worth something to you, but I see now that, as you were dead, I was just a distraction for you, just another demon in your personal hell. No way I can compete with a woman, not even a dead one – but I reckon that was what you knew all along, that being with me was just a way to pass the time, 'til you had the chance to square things up with the devil you were really looking for." 

He turned away from Chris, shoving his eyeglass into the pocket of his coat. Chris watched him, some part of him understanding that Vin was leaving - leaving. Going away. Ending this thing between them. 

Without a conscious thought, he reached out and clutched at the sleeve of Vin's buckskin coat, the leather softer than it looked. "Hang on, there," he snapped, the sharpness in his tone cutting through the ambiguity. 

But Vin jerked away from his, and his eyes were bright and angry when they turned to Chris. "No need," he snapped. "I got your message."

Chris stiffened, seeing someone before him he'd never seen before – or, rather, someone he'd never seen speaking to him. This was Vin Tanner, hard, uncompromising, clear in his own mind about the way the world should work. 

As if to make that clear, Vin hissed, "You were a dead man, or so you say. But I've seen dead men walking. I know what it is to see the dead among us, Chris. Maybe you are one of 'em, maybe you've chosen to go that path. If you have – well, if you have, there ain't nothing I can offer to bring you back. I've given all I've got, and if it ain't enough, then you're already on a path that has one direction." 

Chris stared at him, stunned by the words, stunned by the idea that Vin was giving up on him. Stunned by the idea that he might have lost the one thing that actually grounded him here. 

Stunned by the fact that his anger wasn't there to push him forward. It tried – it flared that Vin was being unfair, that Vin didn't understand, that no one had the right to challenge his love for his family, his determination to fin their killers. 

But at the same time, there was a softer voice, low and easy, one that seemed too familiar, telling him that maybe Vin was right. That maybe, for now, there were things that were more important than vengeance. 

Vin turned away again, and Chris reached out once more. But this time, he didn't try to catch Vin so much as get his attention. "Wait," he said again, more loudly this time. "Just – just hold on a minute."

Vin slowed then stopped but he didn't turn back. His shoulders were stiff, his hands at his sides, one of them still gripping the eyeglass in his pocket.

Chris swallowed, thinking about what he wanted. "You want me to say something I ain't ready to say – hell, to think about something I can't wrap my head around. What I've been trying to explain to you is that I'm trying to think about it, trying to – hell, trying to understand it. But I can't let go yet of what I had with them."

Vin shrugged. "Said I understand," he said sharply, making to walk away. "I can't compete with a dead woman who has you wishing you were in the grave with her, instead of here."

Chris' head throbbed as if it might burst. Spikes of pain flared up his arms, starting in his palms where his nails were cutting half-moons into his skin. The anger had come now, and he thought that if he said anything, he might not be able to stop the flow of hurtful, angry things that were looping around inside his head, looking for a way out. He tried to stop the spiral of anger, tried to reach back to that strange calm he had had just minutes before, but the anger, the pain of it, was more familiar, more natural still than the easy joy and uncomfortable contendedness. It found the control, and let the words slip out into the space between them before he could stop them. 

"You're damned right, you won't ever be able to replace her, her and Adam," he said low, his voice deep and sharp. "No one can. But that ain't really what you're on about, 'cause you know that, you've always known that."

Vin turned, looking over his shoulder at Chris and something flickered in his blue eyes. It might have been a flare of hurt, or maybe a flare of his own anger, still simmering.

Chris drew a breath and went on, the next words bubbling off the tip of his tongue. "No one, Vin. Not another woman, either, not any one person." He held Vin's gaze, willing him to say something, to fight him, to yell, to throw a punch. 

Willing him to make the move that would end it all between them, let him return to the way it was before, when all he had to think about was his anger and his grief and missing Sarah and Adam. Wanting to be with them. 

For a time, as his rage burned hot, Vin stood looking at him, his face tight, his jaw hard, the creases in his broad forehead unrelenting in their conviction. 

But the echo of Chris' words stretched in the space between them, slowly expanding to cling to each of them, drawing them together. Gradually, as the sound settled on them like the mist of hot oil in a crowded kitchen, Vin's eyes closed in a long, slow blink. 

Chris knew it for what it was: surrender. He didn't like it, knew it wasn't natural for Vin. Knew that it was because of this thing he couldn't, wouldn't put a name to, could barely think about. Part of him felt frustrated, the anger unassuaged. 

But another part of him relaxed a little, as if he'd just come out of gunfight, and no one he cared about was dead. Maybe that was why he found the words, now, why they came gently. "It ain't you," he said softly. "Hell, it's – it's anyone. Everyone."

Vin didn't look up but his eyelids fluttered against the freckled skin of his cheeks. "Yeah," he sighed after a time. "Reckon it is."

Chris studied him, the high cheekbones sharp to the touch, the slightly upturned nose that was easy to tweak in the early morning. The dejection that was so uncommon as to be frightening. "You're the first among them," he said, taking a slow step forward. "Don't know what I'd do without you, not now."

Vin huffed, and Chris thought maybe it was supposed to be a laugh. But Vin finally lifted his head, looking at Chris, and Chris was caught once more in the sparkling clarity of those eyes. 

He nodded at the unspoken question, knowing for himself that his words were true. There were different ways to care about people, but sometimes, many times, he forgot. Maybe that was what being dead was, forgetting how to feel anything other than the extremes. For a long while, that was all he'd been able to feel, and even now, it was most of what he felt. 

But some of it was coming back, slow and hazy and uncomfortable, like an itch that couldn't quite be scratched. It was a start, though. 

"Want to head down to Buck's campaign rally?" he asked, reaching out to drop a hand on Vin's shoulder as he drew near. "Hear he's serving beer and biscuits – or something Louisa commissioned from Inez." 

Vin looked past Chris toward the desert and the setting sun, just barely visible above the range of mountains. "Reckon we're safe enough, for now, anyway."

Chris nodded, tightening his hold on Vin's shoulder. "Good as it gets, most days. Good as it gets."


End file.
